U.S. Patent 4,186,757, assigned to Service d'Exploitation Industrielle des Tabacs et Allumettes. A process for forming a large sheet of natural tobacco for manufacturing particularly cigar wrappers comprising the steps of placing end to end natural tobacco leaves or half-leaves with the main rib of said leaves being in alignment for forming a sheet of at least two continuous rows, displacing said rows in such manner that the leaves or half-leaves of a row overlap the leaves of half-leaves of at least another row via their complementary parts and eventually covering with leaf fragments the areas of the tobacco sheet which are deprived of tobacco.